Great Illegals
Group of Soviet espionage agents
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The Great Illegals were a group of Soviet Comintern espionage agents whom MI5 counterintelligence agent Peter Wright grouped together due to their masterful espionage activities against the west.[1][2][3] Often, they were generally foreigners but held Russian citizenship and were ideologically driven.[1] They were trotskyist communists who believed in international communism and the comintern. Wright considered them the best recruiters and controllers (espionage directors) that Soviet intelligence ever produced.[1] They knew each other, and together they recruited and built a number of high-grade espionage networks in hostile foreign countries, across the world.[1] Examples of these were: Arnold Deutsch, who recruited Kim Philby of the Cambridge Five in Britain;[4] the Red Three (Rote Drei) in Switzerland, run by Alexander Radó; Leopold Trepper's network, the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle), in German-occupied Europe; and Richard Sorge's espionage network in China and Japan.[1]
